Being...a bartender

By Carmen CheungSeptember 28, 2009

Entering the industry years ago through his father’s café-bar business, Len Fragomeni sees his path to becoming a bartender as a natural transition. “Once you get a taste of it, some people get out of it, other people become lifers,” he says. Having worked his way up from being kitchen staff, to becoming a bartender by the age of 18, at the age of 35 he is now the founder and president of the Toronto Institute of Bartending (TIB) as well as Mott’s Clamato’s appointed “Dean of Caesars.”

In other words, Len Fragomeni is a lifer.

Though it is possible for bartenders to make the jump from being behind the bar directly into opening bartending schools, Fragomeni’s approach was a little different. “I wasn’t a bartender that had this crazy idea to start a bartending school,” he says.

Working his way from kitchen to server to bartender, eventually moving into managerial roles, Fragomeni became a corporate trainer for a large restaurant chain. Fragomeni also has a college degree in business and marketing. His experience in corporate training is what, he believes, sets TIB apart from other schools.

Fragomeni saw a need for bartenders and servers working in the industry to be better trained. “And here we are six years later…” he says.

Of all his years of experience in the industry, Fragomeni counts the more recent years as his favourite. He owns a bartending school that trains 2000 to 3000 students a year, and is a brand ambassador for Mott’s Clamato. “That’s the pinnacle of my career – the high point.”

His involvement with Mott’s Clamato originally began through the school, but two years ago Fragomeni was approached with the idea of becoming a brand ambassador. The job entails helping with different types of LCBO training and media appearances, allowing him to travel across Canada to promote “Canada’s most prized cocktail – the Caesar.” They were looking for one person to represent them, “and I’ve been that person for the last two years,” says Fragomeni.

Having travelled across Canada, Fragomeni has seen his share of bars – both good and bad. Though he is based in Toronto, he finds that Toronto (the GTA) is “probably the worst place in Canada for finding great bartenders.” He finds that people are hired for the wrong reasons.

“You have to have the right person behind the right bar because at the end of the day, eye candy is just eye candy. If you want great drinks or great service, you have to have the right person serving you,” he explains.

BEING A BARTENDER

Pay range: “There really is no (range). Some women say they’re able to make $1500 a night.” Fragomeni is sceptical of the truth in this figure. “On average, a bartender can make anywhere from $40,000 to $70,000 a year working in a fairly busy establishment. Most of the club girls who say they make all this money, if you work the numbers out with the number of hours they actually work in a weekend (only about 4) it’s almost impossible to make the money that they say they’re making.”

Experience (how to get it): “That whole, ‘I only (want to hire experienced bartenders),’ …comes from inexperienced managers because of the fact that they don’t have the confidence to hop back there themselves. You’ll find that a lot of the chains and the more professionally-run operations will actually hire people without experience and give full training. They start off as a hostess or server and eventually get up to the bar.”

How to get the job: “There (are) plenty of establishments that’ll hire you based on personality. We try to tell students on a regular basis, if you go in and show that you have great work ethic and a great personality, then you’re going to get on the bar within a week. You can teach anybody how to mix drinks and pour beer and open up wine and then serve wine and serve food, but you really can’t teach that personality and work ethic. They either have it or they don’t.”